Tuesday, November 20, 2012

You don't love pumpkin pie? You're like me. Looking for something different for Thanksgiving? Try this delicious cranberry apple pie, which my wife and her fellow members of the Grace Church cooking crew served at our Harvest Dinner, and which was a great success.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a nine inch standard pie pan with the pastry; flute the edges.

Slice the apples thinly and mix them in a bowl with the cranberries. Add and mix sugar, lemon juice, and flour. Put the filling in the pastry, smoothing the top. Put in oven and bake for thirty minutes.

While the pie is baking, mix the flour, sugar, and cinnamon for the topping in a bowl. Add the butter and combine it with the other ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

When thirty minutes are up, take the pie from the oven, reduce the temperature to 375 degrees, spread the topping on the pie, and bake for another thirty minutes, or until the top is a golden brown. Let it cool for two hours before serving.

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About Me

I narrowly missed being that rara avis for my generation, a native Floridian, when the U.S. Army closed its hospital in Tallahassee, shortly before my mother’s due date. She went home, and I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor: Altoona, Pennsylvania. In that chilly March of 1946, the first sound to reach my infant ears from outside the hospital walls was likely the shriek of a steam locomotive’s whistle. This could explain my lifelong love of trains. Four surface crossings of the Atlantic in childhood also led to fascination with ships and the sea.

My father was in the military, so our family (I was an only child) went from place to place often in my early years. I was in England from the ages of five to eight (the first newspaper headline I recall reading is “KING DIES”; the King in question being George VI, father of Elizabeth II) and began my formal education in a rural county council (what we call “public”) school, where I probably escaped having my bottom caned only because the headmistress feared creating an international incident. Other places where I lived while growing up were Miami, San Antonio, Cheyenne, the Florida panhandle and Tampa.

I graduated from the University of South Florida (B.A., 1967) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1970). After that, apart from two years' duty in the U.S. Army, I practiced law in New York City. I worked in law firms and as in-house counsel, and served on the boards of directors of an insurer and a reinsurer. On a volunteer basis I now write for Brooklyn Heights Blog and the Brooklyn Bugle, and also publish my own blog, Self-Absorbed Boomer, which has been described as "relentlessly eclectic." In 1991, I married Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We live in Brooklyn Heights. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, also lives in Brooklyn.